Chinese Esports Host Accused Of Blackface Following On-Stream Stunt

Earlier this month, during the second stage of the 2026 NBPL Spring Tournament for the battle royale game Naraka: Bladepoint, Chinese commentator 喳喳 (“Chirp Chirp”), who is also known as Zha Zha (or Cha Cha), made an appearance on stream painted head-to-toe in black paint. As the story has made its way outside of China, readers in the West have reflexively begun to accuse Zha Zha of blackface, but what exactly is the context behind this oddly mistranslated story? As it turns out, it seems to involve a tactic among competitive players of Naraka: Bladepoint to make their characters very dark so that they can better hide from their opponents.

This story has made its way through several publications in China over the past week, and the translation of events has led people to assume that Zha Zha’s stunt was pulled in response to a separate controversy. As Dexerto noted in its piece, the organizers of the 2026 NBPL Spring Tournament had previously been accused of forcing Zha Zha to dress in revealing outfits, which she eventually addressed in a post on Weibo. “No one has ever forced me to wear inappropriate clothing on official broadcasts to appear in public,” reads Zha Zha’s statement. “The reason I chose a short skirt was to present a better on-camera look for viewers.”

Zha Zha’s subsequent appearance, in which she wore a black outfit and painted her skin black, was tied to this statement by outlets in China, with the implication being that the black body paint was intended by Zha Zha as a response to criticism of her attire. Following the English press coverage, several users on X have stated that Zha Zha’s look constituted blackface.

Doing blackface to fight misogyny

?????? https://t.co/oOIRZRrcz8

— nyara (@nyaraVT) April 16, 2026

Now, far be it from me, a man so white that I’m still at risk of getting sunburned during overcast weather in Britain, to police what does and doesn’t count as blackface, but it does seem that a lot of context has gotten lost in the sauce here. For a start, I can’t find any direct evidence that Zha Zha’s stunt was a response to the accusations that the event organisers had forced her to dress a specific way. The events seemingly occurred close together, but that’s it.

However, what I did find is that Zha Zha regularly appears on NBPL Tournament streams cosplaying as characters from Naraka: Bladepoint. After a little digging, I found this comment reacting to her latest appearance at the 2026 NBPL Spring Tournament on Reddit.

“Bit of context here…The game has a character named Matari, who is a pale white beautiful thief from the desert that is specialized in stealth (invisibility) and hit and run tactics (teleport, dash),” writes user MrMerryMilkshake. “The game has facial customization that allows you to upload photos for ingame character faces (similar to Where Winds Meet) and generate QR code so others can copy. One of the most popular matari facial code[s] is completely black, due to in-game advantages to [hiding] while climbing trees and holding on the roof in dark corners…This is the event organizer making fun of the playerbase’s habit of min maxing.”

Turns out, yeah, this is a thing in Naraka: Bladepoint. There are Reddit threads going all the way back to 2022 asking why every high-ranked player in the game has “black/dark skin.” I even found an article from the Chinese outlet Taobao that had pictures of these “Little Black” skins. Chinese fans refer to these skins in Naraka: Bladepoint as “Shadow Person” or “Shadow Criminal,” which is a reference to a silhouetted character of the same name from the manga Detective Conan.

🚨VIRAL: NBPL Spring Season's (esports league) organizers had a female commentator, Zhazha, show up with black face, as a deliberate response to the complainers, who accused the organizers of forcing her into "revealing" clothes, despite her clarifying that it was her choice. pic.twitter.com/7ihOLKeWFd

— postman 🪩 (@postman002) April 12, 2026

As you can see in the clip above, Zha Zha hits a sneaking emote as she enters from off camera in the now viral clip, in reference to the fact that people use these types of skins in Naraka: Bladepoint so they’re more difficult to spot during matches. But, again, it’s not my place to say whether or not the contextual justification makes it blackface or not, so I’ll leave that to the folks on X to argue about instead.